A lot of folks depend on Ubuntu-based distros and Mint's strong suit is currently Ubuntu-based. Looking to the future, however, I'd welcome Mint dropping Ubuntu and going an LMDE or other non-Ubuntu route, such as Arch.

I have never understood what people are talking about when they say Mint ought to be based on something more stable. I have been using Mint for a year and a half and have never had a kernel panic, never, not once. This makes Mint considerably more stable than any version of Windows or OSX I have ever used.How much more stable than "never crashes" can you get?Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc are all basically server OSs which need a fair about of buffing to be really good on the desktop. Mint let the well funded Ubuntu do a lot of the heavey lifting so the very small team that develops Mint can attend to making it a great desktop OS that is so easy to use you don't have to be a Linux guru to run it.There are dozens of distros which cater to the tinkering crowd, Mint is for people who don't want to have to fiddle with things to make them work. I switched to Mint because Apple is too evil for my tastes and Microsoft is both evil and incompetent. I just wanted a good desktop OS, which Mint provides and it is a very valuable asset that in Mint, you don't have to know anything about the terminal to enjoy the system.

InkKnife wrote:I have never understood what people are talking about when they say Mint ought to be based on something more stable. I have been using Mint for a year and a half and have never had a kernel panic, never, not once. This makes Mint considerably more stable than any version of Windows or OSX I have ever used.How much more stable than "never crashes" can you get?Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc are all basically server OSs which need a fair about of buffing to be really good on the desktop. Mint let the well funded Ubuntu do a lot of the heavey lifting so the very small team that develops Mint can attend to making it a great desktop OS that is so easy to use you don't have to be a Linux guru to run it.There are dozens of distros which cater to the tinkering crowd, Mint is for people who don't want to have to fiddle with things to make them work. I switched to Mint because Apple is too evil for my tastes and Microsoft is both evil and incompetent. I just wanted a good desktop OS, which Mint provides and it is a very valuable asset that in Mint, you don't have to know anything about the terminal to enjoy the system.

if you keep track on this forum you'll found that this forum suddenly flooded with threads about mint15 bugs after it got released. it seems ubuntu becomes less stable and tends to buggy in their recent releases. that's why peoples want mint devs to use another distro as their base. nevertheless, they already heard and respond to it. aside from the main version we also have LMDE which based on debian as it's base.

InkKnife wrote:I have never understood what people are talking about when they say Mint ought to be based on something more stable. I have been using Mint for a year and a half and have never had a kernel panic, never, not once. This makes Mint considerably more stable than any version of Windows or OSX I have ever used.How much more stable than "never crashes" can you get?Debian, Fedora, Arch, etc are all basically server OSs which need a fair about of buffing to be really good on the desktop. Mint let the well funded Ubuntu do a lot of the heavey lifting so the very small team that develops Mint can attend to making it a great desktop OS that is so easy to use you don't have to be a Linux guru to run it.There are dozens of distros which cater to the tinkering crowd, Mint is for people who don't want to have to fiddle with things to make them work. I switched to Mint because Apple is too evil for my tastes and Microsoft is both evil and incompetent. I just wanted a good desktop OS, which Mint provides and it is a very valuable asset that in Mint, you don't have to know anything about the terminal to enjoy the system.

if you keep track on this forum you'll found that this forum suddenly flooded with threads about mint15 bugs after it got released. it seems ubuntu becomes less stable and tends to buggy in their recent releases. that's why peoples want mint devs to use another distro as their base. nevertheless, they already heard and respond to it. aside from the main version we also have LMDE which based on debian as it's base.

I have no attachment to Ubuntu at all but I have to point out what a huge asset Mint gains by being package compatible with Ubuntu. Are the bugs from the Ubuntu base or are they being found in the Mint stuff? I have not had any troubles but with the furious pace that Mint has been developing I would not be surprised if some bugs slipped through. My experience over the year and a half I have been using Mint is that there are always a few problem but they get ironed out with updates.If Clem and team decide to move to a new base I wouldn't stand opposed but that seems a bit of an overreaction to one rocky release. Best spend some time determining where the bugs are before pushing for a really challenging solution like jumping bases.We don't want to be using a shotgun to kill a fly.

kurotsugi wrote:I have not had any troubles but with the furious pace that Mint has been developing I would not be surprised if some bugs slipped through. My experience over the year and a half I have been using Mint is that there are always a few problem but they get ironed out with updates.If Clem and team decide to move to a new base I wouldn't stand opposed but that seems a bit of an overreaction to one rocky release. Best spend some time determining where the bugs are before pushing for a really challenging solution like jumping bases.We don't want to be using a shotgun to kill a fly.

I do agree with you I think Mint should maintain its compatibility with Ubuntu and I think Canonical should support the Mint project because this will only add to Ubuntu's popularity Always remember our enemies are OS X and MS Windows. I think Linux has beaten OS X and the only remaining foe is MS which I think Mint 15 has delivered the death blow to it

Considering the new Ubuntu policy, where non-LTS releases are more than ever interim/experimental releases (6 months basic lifetime + 3 months overlapping the next release to just let you a few weeks to upgrade - or not). A smart move could be for Linux Mint to focus and use only Ubuntu LTS releases as a working base, ditching the interim Ubuntu releases.

During the 2 years interval between Ubuntu LTS, LM could then work on its own brand and custom tools. So the dev team could deliver a rolling release based on Ubuntu LTS backports and/or deliver its own branded "point" releases with the new versions of its own custom tools and layers like Cinnamon, MATE and Mint-specific features. Kind of a LMULE - Linux Mint Ubuntu-LTS Edition - with a better support cycle than LMDE has today.

NB: Fedora and Arch are not "server OSs", far from that: they lack the kernel tuning and default tight/secure config params to do so...

InkKnife wrote:I have no attachment to Ubuntu at all but I have to point out what a huge asset Mint gains by being package compatible with Ubuntu. Are the bugs from the Ubuntu base or are they being found in the Mint stuff? ...

Right now it looks like the instability, boot time freezes, no HDMI audio and such that are being reported are due to the mainline kernel that comes with the Ubuntu Raring (version 3.8.0-19). According to the latest Linux Mint Monthly News post, Clem has stated that this kernel should be replaced in the upcoming KDE and XFCE editions with mainline kernel 3.8.0-25 which should be available soon. From the post:

Although it was selected as default in Ubuntu 13.04, the 3.8.0-19 kernel used in Linux Mint 15 didn’t work as well as we’d have expected. Many people were unable to get the sound working through HDMI and some even experienced kernel panics and system freezes. A few workarounds were identified during the RC but the cause of the problem wasn’t clear to us so we spent time looking into this… we’ll vulgarize our findings on the Segfault blog and we’re likely to upgrade the kernel to 3.8.0-25 (up-to-date with upstream 3.8.13) in the upcoming KDE and Xfce editions.

This kernel will also be available as a "level 5" upgrade via MintUpdate in the Cinnamon and MATE editions of LM 15 when Ubuntu releases it. You'll have to temporarily enable level 5 updates in MintUpdate in order to upgrade to the new kernel when it's available. I assume there will be an announcement when this happens.

And there's always those folks who encounter video and wireless driver issues but that's typical for any Linux distro. Thankfully those kind of issues have now become the exception rather than the rule.

"Humph. Choice, it is the quintessential Linux delusion, simultaneously the source of it's greatest strength, and it's greatest weakness." (All apologies to The Architect)

I'm really new to Linux Mint (I've only been using it for about two months now) but so far I haven't really had any of the issues on it that I used to have with Ubuntu. Maybe they'll show up in time though.Also, I'd be quite interested in finding out what a Linux Mint Arch Edition would be like. Mint is my main OS right now, but I use Arch on the side, so combining them would probably turn out to be a pretty cool distribution.

Hello Fellas, thought I'd try loading Lubuntu on a spare drive I had laying around here early this morning.Had problems with it since it uses Ubuntu repository for updating. BigTime crash, so I decided to put LMDEon the drive after wiping it and it was ok until I did an update. I suspect the updates came from Ubuntu? Ifany of files are updates are from that repository I won't update! I ended up putting Mint 14 "Nadia" back onthat drive and it works good but I doubt if I will do an update if they are using Ubuntu for updates. On bothinstances with the other systems, I had errors with files not found. When the system is running and then aupdate is done, and afterwards the system won't even start showing a bunch of errors, it stands to reason,something is badly wrong with the updates. I don't like Ubuntu and have used their system and won't goback to it because of so many problems.